Point of sale cash registers have traditionally provided a mechanism for storing small to medium amounts of cash in retail as well as wholesale establishments. In addition, most cash registers in use today provide a record of sales indicating the amount of money received during a particular time period.
The frequent exchange of cash in a retail establishment has often resulted in a temptation to employees to siphon away monies received during the retail transaction. One mechanism for the owner of the establishment to check the employee is to compare the cash register receipts generating during a given period with the money contained in the cash register. Occasional shortages are typically absorbed as a cost of doing business, but significant shortages on a continuing basis are naturally a cause for concern to the retail establishment owner.
Comparison of the cash register receipts with the money in the cash register does not detect a common mechanism of employee theft which the present invention addresses. This mechanism is for the employee to charge the customer the marked or standard price for an item and ring up a substantially smaller price on the cash register. This practice is particularly common in less sophisticated retail establishments such as restaurants, bars, and the like. If a bartender enters into the cash register a value less than the drink purchased and keeps track of how many times this procedure is followed, at some convenient time when detection is least likely he or she knows exactly how much money to take from the cash register without a discrepancy between cash register receipts and money in the cash register.
One method known to impede, if not stop, this process is for the cash register drawers to be reconciled at unpredictable intervals during the day by management. The cash must be withdrawn from the drawer and compared with the cash register receipt at odd intervals so that the employee will never know how long to keep the extra money in the register. If, for example, the management discovers a significant overage between cash register receipt and money in the register, practice of this common mechanism of employee theft will be the first thing that comes to mind.
The time-consuming process of random, periodic checking between the cash register receipts and its contents is not only inefficient, it intimidates the employee and brings his honesty into question, often unnecessarily. The present invention relates to an automated mechanism for addressing this problem.